The Nightwhat Sandapile
by nightmarekitt
Summary: The Almost Coffin...Danny is shocked by his own reaction when Vlad gets badly injured in a car accident. One shot for now. No Slash
1. Chapter 1

**The Nightwhat Sandapile**

_Danny Phantom © Butch Hartman/Nickelodeon_

No one had seen this coming, and as Danny looked through the glass, he felt oddly out of place. It was as if he were having some wild out-of-body experience, because his mind had long since floated out of reach. He had to keep reminding himself that his family was standing right behind him, and that his friends were a quick phone call away, because this was completely impossible.

To be frank, Danny Fenton was in a state of shock.

Seriously, of all people, it was completely out of place for something like this to have happened to **him** – to _Vlad_. Danny had always thought of Vlad as invincible. The older halfa had unbridled power, money, and influences. He was intelligent, clever, and always in control. But to see him this way – to see him _broken – _tugged at Danny's heart. As his parents and older sister were pulled to the side to hear what the doctors had to say, the dark-haired teenager stared listlessly into the room that his archnemesis now occupied. He pressed a palm to the cool glass as his brow furrowed and his mouth fell open in a small gape.

The fact of the matter was that the situation was trying desperately to sink in to the teenager's haggled brain, but Danny was having none of it. _How _could something as normal as a _car crash_ have taken this powerful man down? This was Vlad. _Vlad._ The all powerful half ghost who practically owned the ghost zone and half of the living world. Danny hated the man, sure, but he looked up to him, too. As the only other half ghost besides Danny himself, and a disturbingly powerful one at that, it was simply ridiculous to believe that this was really happening.

Worst of all was the way Danny _felt _about it. He had never really dug into to his emotions concerning the older hybrid, having abandoned them after that first unfortunate turn of events at the college reunion. However, when he had gotten the news, something completely unexpected had taken place. Utter devastation. His heart had stopped when his parents pulled him out of school to tell him about the accident, before they all hopped in the Fenton RV and raced off to the emergency room. The car ride felt like an eternity, and the entire time, Danny could hear his heart thundering in his ears, his thoughts running amock so frantically that his mind eventually went blank and pure emotion took over.

Raw panic set in, and Danny found himself bawling in the back seat, his sister's arms embracing him consolingly as her face bore an expression of absolute surprise and not an inkling of worry or fear for the billionaire – understandably. For Danny this wash of emotion was completely unsound.

Why should he care for a man who had beaten and tried to kill him on multiple occasions? Who sought frantically to ruin the relationship between his parents, kill his father, take his mother away, and make him an evil apprentice and son? Why should he care for this man who wanted nothing more than to dismantle the boy's happy existence in pursuit of his own selfish goals? Why was he crying for Vlad? Why were his thoughts all tumbling together, and his mind forming images of what might be? Bloody, gorey displays of how Vlad _might look _when they walked into that hospital?

Why did he care?

Danny tore through the hospital, angrily dodging security guards and alarmed medical staff as he followed his ghostly instincts to the right room, the right place. He was more than a little fortunate that no one had seen him phase through the wall and into the critical care room. As group of busy doctors surrounded Danny's goal, and hoards of machinery beeped and blipped around them, making a chaotic mess of sound that caused more panic in the boy's already unstable state, the teenager froze for a moment in shock, before rushing forward and wiggling his way through the fray.

"What's he doing in here!" someone screamed.

"How'd he get in? _Get him out!"_

Danny found himself being tugged on and pulled away, but he wouldn't have it. With more strength than a normal human could muster, he jerked free of at least six hands and finally found what he'd been looking for. All the blood left his face, when he saw Vlad. The older halfa was covered in blood. His face was horribly bruised and scratched. His clothes were in tatters, and his face was scrunched into a contortion of absolute agony – eyes closed.

Danny felt his throat go dry. "V…Vlad?"

A gasp of surprise could be heard from the doctors as Vlad's eyelids snapped open and blue irises glowed with recognition.

"Daniel?" he croaked, coughed, and started spitting up blood. Some of the machines surrounding them went haywire and the doctors went into a panic. Danny could do nothing to stop them as he was literally drug from the room by six furious doctors.

They left him outside with a nurse who tried to gently to calm him down, but Danny fell to his knees and sobbed violently, leaning against the door. Ten minutes later, his family finally found him practically dry heaving in the hallway. At about the same time, Vlad was rushed off to another room, the doctors around him practically snapping commands at each other in their frenzy to save the billionaie's life. The moment they emerged, Danny was on his feet and following. He was held fast by his Dad, later, kicking and screaming, as Vlad was taken out of sight and out of reach.

Eventually, he fell hopelessly into his mother's arms and cried for hours, gripping her shoulders tightly and trembling. Now he was here, staring through a glass barrier and wishing that none of it was real, on the verge of crying again, because the thoughts alone were ripping him up inside. It had been eight long hours, before they finally got the diagnosis: three broken ribs, a shattered should blade, and three breaks in his spine. An emergency surgery had taken place earlier, to stop some internal bleeding from Vlad's organs. The man was swollen, bruised, and broken. Fortunately, the doctors blamed some of Vlad's already odd statistics on his state of health: for example, his high body temperature, actually a side effect of his ghost half's hot core. But Danny wasn't altogether too concerned with that. What pissed him off was the doctor's insistence that the man not have any visitors for another six hours, long enough for him to rest up a bit.

Danny rolled his eyes at their well-placed, but annoying concerns. The ghost boy would be in that room the first moment that someone looked the other away, and he knew a way to talk to Vlad that wouldn't involve any physical movement whatsoever. In any case, Danny _had _to talk to him soon, mostly just to reassure himself that the older halfa wasn't permanently damaged or worse.

It was a good three hours before Danny Phantom found his way into Vlad's room. He shut the curtain, even though he had decided to remain invisible, regardless, and finally took possession of Vlad himself. It took a bit of prodding, but Danny finally got's Vlad's exhausted conscience to respond to his insistent prodding.

_It's just me, Vlad. It's Danny._

A mental sigh. _Little badger, what are you doing in my head? Cheese logs, I'm tired._

Danny's relief was palpable. _Are you okay?_

_I'm fine, Daniel, just a little broken. _A pause. _You were worried?_

Danny momentarily forgot who's mind he was in, before he was assailed with his own memories of panic, fear, and devastation. When satisfaction washed over him, it took the teenager a moment to recognize that that feeling wasn't _his_, but Vlad's.

_That's very sweet of you, Daniel. I appreciate your concern. Really, I do._

A little too embarrassed and worried to provoke the older halfa at the moment, Danny responded: _You nearly died, fruitloop, and you're still not in the best of shape right now. Do me a favor? Don't push it. I'm freaking out enough as it is. You scared the hell out of me!_

_Surprising, to say the least._

Danny sighed. _You have no idea._

_I think I do, _Vlad replied, tracing over some of the boy's recent memories with surprise. _I…I didn't realize that you cared that much about me._

_Trust me, neither did I, but when I got the news I realized that if you died, some integral part of me would die as well. It scared me. _

_I'm sorry._

Danny sighed. _Alright. Well, I'm going to go back now, before anyone notices anything._

_Okay, but Daniel?_

…_yeah, Vlad?_

_I'm going to need someone to take care of me once I get out of the hospital. I'm sure it will be a few weeks, and there will probably be a surgery involved, however, my healing could go much faster if I took action for my ghost half as well. As you know, only you can understand such a thing._

_Right. Sure, I'll do it._

…_really?_

_Vlad, _Danny said, amused, _I'm happy you're not dead. At least, not _more _dead._

_Run along, little badger…and thank you._

_Later, Vlad._


	2. Chapter 2

**The Nightwhat Sandapile**

_Danny Phantom © Butch Hartman/Nickelodeon_

**Author's Note…Please Read:**

In February of this year (2011) I was stationed in Norfolk, VA for training. I was stressing over school and money issues, when I got a call from my mother in the middle of the night. My Dad had been in an an ATV accident – a bad one. There I was, stranded in Virginia, while my family dealt with this crisis in Florida. I don't think you can understand how horrible of an experience that was for me.

I love my father so much. For him, my mother, and my little brother – I possess a great deal of affection. I love my family to death, and I am to this day, a Daddy's girl. Needless to say, I was a wreck – crying, sobbing, breaking down in my hotel room all by myself. I could do nothing. I couldn't go to him. I couldn't do anything.

I was practically having panic attacks in my room. The phone call I had received from my mother was vague, something along the lines of: "Your Daddy's been in a bad accident. He flew off of a 6 foot bank on a 4-wheeler going 60 mph and landed in the mud. He's alive, but he's hurt really bad. The ambulance is on the way. I'm going there now. I'll call you when I know more." All of this was said around my mother's sobs.

I found out many hours later that he was in the hospital. Practically the next day, I found out that he had broken half of his ribs, shattered a shoulder blade, and broken several parts of his spine. I finally got to talk to him a few days after that, but I could barely understand him. Hearing his voice, I could tell that he was really drugged up and in a lot of pain. They said he kept thinking I was there, hallucinating because of the drugs. I cried every time I spoke to him until about two weeks after the fact, when I finally got to go home and see him. By that point he was out of the hospital, but he couldn't walk on his own. I couldn't even hug him. He was in pain the whole time I was there.

I got to stay for about 10 days, and then I had to fly here, to Okinawa, Japan for work. I'm happy I got to see him. I so happy that he's alive and _moving _again. That was the most terrifying time of my life, and every time I sit down to write this fanfiction, I remember that feeling…that horrible, painful, helpless feeling. It is terrible when someone you truly care about is hurt like that – when you fear for that person's life. You die a little on the inside, and I mean that. You really do.

So please understand, until I get past Vlad's predicament, writing this isn't like writing any other fanfiction. It's personal. It's painful.

But it's something that I feel I need to do.

**.Chapter Two.**

Six months. It would take Vlad 6 months to heal…that is, if he were a normal man. Of course, Vlad Masters was nothing of the sort. By day two of his time in critical care, the doctors were already fawning over how quickly he was recovering. Undoubtedly, if Vlad didn't get away from there soon, someone was going to get suspicious. Danny was, as far as teen knew, the only other living person who knew that Vlad Masters was also Vlad Plasmius, and that his recovery time would probably be closer to two months than six.

Panicking, Danny found himself sending a clone to overshadow the man again in attempts to figure out what the hell they were going to do to get him out of there.

_Vlad, _Danny said urgently. _Vlad, can you hear me? Are you conscious?_

_Yes, little badger. What is it?_

_You're healing too fast. I'm worried. The anomalies in your blood are bound to be noticed. What can I do? If we're not careful, they'll figure out your secret!_

_Calm down, _Vlad insisted, and Danny felt the older halfa mentally writhing.

_Shit, you're in a lot of pain, aren't you?_

_Regrettably._

_Stop trying to move! _Danny growled through their mental link. _What's hurting?_

_Everything, Daniel. It all hurts, _Vlad responded weakly. _And it's hot. My ghost core is overworking itself, trying to heal me too fast. We need to figure out a way to slow it down._

_If I can get them to let me in the room, I can cool you down with my ice powers._

_Then get your ass in here! _Vlad's voice growled through Danny's mind.

…_right. _Danny broke their connection, returning to his own body. He **would** get in that room…somehow. Lifting his head, he walked proudly up to the main desk, and said briskly, "I want to see Vlad."

At this point, the nurse had lost a lot of patience with the teen, having dealt with his antics when he first entered the hospital with his family.

"Sorry, Mr. Fenton. It's not gonna happen."

"Look," Danny snarled, slapping his hand down on the desk violently. "I'm the only one who really gives a shit about him. Just let me in there for ten minutes. I'm not going to hurt him."

The woman stared thoughtfully at him for nearly a minute before finally giving in. "I'll make a few calls," she informed. "Go sit down until I call you up again, okay?"

Danny smiled gratefully. "Thank you."

She nodded, frowning, and picked up the phone. Danny went to sit back down until she finally called his name. He returned to the desk with gleaming eyes, and she spoke exasperatedly.

"Ten minutes. Don't be too loud, don't touch any of the medical equipment, and most importantly, _don't touch him._"

Danny nodded vigorously. "Right."

She waved towards the hallway and said, "You know which one it is. Your time starts now. I'll be checking on you in about five minutes, got it?"

"Yeah.." Danny whispered, already rushing towards the hallway. He quietly slipped into to Vlad's room, his throat going dry as his eyes assessed the man on the hospital bed. All of Vlad's wounds were wrapped in bandages, but bruises covered almost every bit of visible skin, including his face. Danny grimaced, letting the temperature in the room drop to a temperature to a dangerous level. He was afraid to actually touch Vlad in any case, despite the nurse's warnings.

"Fruitloop," Danny said, brushing his fingers over several strands of the mans silver hair that was spread over a pillow. "How did this happen to you? You're supposed to be invincible." The teen sighed as Vlad continued to sleep on, ignoring him. _He's probably to weak to actually talk. _"I hope the cold helps. It's the best I can do without actually touching you. I don't even know why I care, you know, but when I heard the news I really freaked out. I realized that I really don't want you to die."

"Danny…" Vlad's voice came out as a rasp.

Danny's eyes snapped open. "Vlad? You can talk? Can you open your eyes? How are you feeling? Are you-"

"Calm…down," Vlad said shakily, eyes still closed.

Danny actually felt himself tearing up again. Furious with himself, he though: _what am I, a baby?_

He took a long breath. "Are you okay, Vlad?"

The teen saw Vlad smirk a little. "Stupid…question."

Danny smiled as tears fell from his eyes, hating the saltly droplets with all his might. He sniffled, and said, "I'm so glad you're not dead."

"I know…" Vlad hissed, and winced, even though he hadn't even moved. "Hurts."

"S-sorry."

"Wasn't….y-you fault. _This_ time."

Danny laughed weakly. "I'd never do this."

"I know." He paused for a long moment, taking care to breathe slowly. "Danny….my cell phone. Get it…call Greg. Tell him."

"Okay," Danny agreed quickly, wiping at his eyes. "But tell him what?"

"He…knows…secret."

Danny's eyes saucered. "He _does_?" An irrational swell of fury filled Danny's chest - Who the _hell _was Greg?

"Just….do it. Mmmm, sleep."

Vlad's breathing leveled out, and Danny realized with some small amount of horror that this meant Vlad had completely passed out again. Fighting off a fresh wave of sobs and still partially seething, Danny abandoned the room, still not able to stop the tears streaming down his face. He found the nurse at the front desk, and said: "Vlad's phone…can I get it? He said to."

The nurse's eyes were surprised. "He woke up?"

Danny nodded, and the nurse jumped into action. She raced across the room and down the hall, calling to doctors and nurses alike. She came back to the teen out of breath and brimming with adrenaline. Frowning at his expression, she gave him a box of tissues.

"Now, what happened?"

"H-he didn't even open his eyes," Danny whispered, cleaning himself up with tissues, but the tears just kept coming. "He said to call someone. Greg. On his cellphone."

"He's on a lot of morphine," the nurse said gently. "He was probably hallucinating."

"But…I need…can you just pull the number from the cell for me?" Danny asked desperately.

She bit her lip with a thoughtful look, then said, "I'll see what I can do. Please, go sit down with your family for a bit, honey. You look aweful."

Danny sighed and left the counter, swaying dizzily. He found a seat between his sister and his mom, who both looked more worried for his well-being than Vlad's. Danny had to swallow a fresh swell of anger at that, knowing it was irrational for anyone to feel any sort of sympathy for a man who clearly deserved any pain he got, but Danny couldn't bring himself to see it that way.

**Nightwhat-Sandapile-**

Danny eased himself into Vlad's mind.

_Hey, fruitloop. You okay?_

…_Daniel?_

_Yeah, it's me._

_Why is Maddie eating that cat?_

_Whoa. Ummm, Mom's not even in the room Vlad. You're on like three different weird drugs that all make you hallucinate . Oh, and you're eyes aren't even open. You still can't talk?_

_I don't have chicken pox, Daniel._

_I'll take that as a no, and, by the way, I have no idea what you're talking about._

_Carrots?_

_Oh my God. You really are insane. Listen, I called that guy Greg. He's taking care of everything. They're moving you back to the mansion tomorrow._

_You're staying with me?_

…_yes._

_Well, that's good. It freaks me out when Jack starts mawling the furniture._

…_um._

_What did you do with my carrots?_

_Vlad, I'm gonna go now._

_Okay, Daniel. I love you._

…_what did you just say?_

_Bring carrots next time, alright?_

_W-whatever you say, fruitloop._

Danny pulled out of Vlad's mind again, utterly shaken by those three little words…

_I love you._

Now he just had to figure out how he was going to convince his parents to let him stay with Vlad.


End file.
